Day: January 25, 2024

GROOT AUB: The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture has approved plans for the construction of an additional primary school at the Groot Aub settlement in the Khomas Region.

The Director of Education in the region, Paulus Nghikembua, told Nampa in a recent interview that the primary school is expected to be operational by 2030.

The rapidly expanding settlement, situated about 60 kilometres south of Windhoek, currently has only one primary school and one secondary school, catering to a population exceeding 24 000 residents.

The surge in population has led to the overcrowding of classrooms at both Groot Aub Primary School and Groot Aub Secondary School.

Isak de Groot, the principal of Groot Aub Secondary School, told Nampa in a recent interview that last year, the school had three Grade 8 classes, and there is a possibility of that number increasing in the current academic year.

‘We have admitted 181 Grade 8 learners this year, and there is a possibility that that number will increase, so we might need
an additional class,’ De Groot stated.

Additionally, the school accommodates learners from Farm Primary School in Dordabis, Nicolas Witbooi Memorial School, and Bloukrans Primary School.

Last year, De Groot said, the school made use of a church building and library on the premises as additional classrooms.

‘We have asked the Directorate of Education to provide us with extra classrooms and we now have four newly built classrooms. We are also privileged this year to have two extra teaching posts allocated to our school. I want to commend our regional directorate in that regard. When we ask, they provide,’ he added.

He also said that to curb the high failure rate at the secondary school, the ministry has constructed a hostel to accommodate learners. The facility, although complete, has no running water and electricity and learners have not moved in yet.

Nghikembua confirmed that the hostel was constructed to mitigate issues such as failure rates.

‘The structure is already approved in terms of personnel. Th
e issue now is electricity. We paid NamPower for the connection. As soon as they’re ready, they will put a transformer. We are also busy with water connection through the City of Windhoek. Some of these issues are not in our hands, but the hostel needs its water connection or a pipe from the reservoir,’ Nghikembua explained.

He said once the new primary school is complete, they will start working on plans for another secondary school.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency

OKOLOTI: Deputy director of marginalised communities in the Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, Rebekka Namwandi has encouraged members of marginalised communities to stay in one place to ensure that they receive their quarterly food allocations.

Namwandi said in an interview with Nampa on Thursday that the nomadic nature of some of the members of the marginalised communities has made it difficult for the allocation of food parcels.

‘That is their way of living, it is their character so we cannot do anything about it because that is their tradition. It [however] makes our job extremely difficult and costly because our regional planners travel for long distances to take food to them but they find a whole village vacant,’ said Namwandi.

In response to the issue, Namwandi said the ministry has started looking for strategies to let regional councillors notify them through radio communication about the availability of food parcels.

‘But I have learned that people neither listen
to radios nor read newspapers because of the location they are in, so it is extremely difficult to alert them,’ she said.

Namwandi said this after the regional councillor of Nehale Lyampingana Constituency in Oshikoto Region, Joseph Shilongo told Nampa they are struggling to distribute food to the marginalised communities because they are always moving from one place to another without notifying him.

He said once they hear that some of their fellow communities at a certain place have received food parcels, they all scramble all there, not knowing that they will also get it.

‘When we come at their areas, we do not find them there because they are at other areas where they heard that people received food,’ said Shilongo.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency

RUNDU: A 30-year-old man allegedly escaped from custody at Ndiyona Police Station in the Kavango East Region on Wednesday.

Tha Namibian Police Force’s (NamPol) Acting Regional Commander, Deputy Commissioner Eino Nambahu, told Nampa on Thursday the incident happened around 12h00.

He said the police are currently on the hunt for Faustinus Kandere Shinkanda who was an inmate at the Ndiyona Police Station.

It is reported that Shinkanda was spotted heading towards the western direction of the Ndiyiba, Mupapama, Mabushe, Ndonga Linena and Mbwata villages.

According to Nambahu, the suspect was arrested on charges of murder and attempted murder, without specifying when the arrest took place.

Nambahu said the community should consider the escapee as dangerous, and should urgently contact their nearest police station upon seeing him.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency

WINDHOEK: Namibia has taken the lead in advocating for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) to be transformed from a charitable organisation into an international inter-parliamentary organisation.

The Namibian parliament this week hosted a meeting of the budget committee of the CPA Africa region to, among others, discuss the resolution to convert the parliamentary association into an international body.

While officiating the budget committee meeting in Windhoek on Thursday, chairperson of the National Council, Lukas Sinimbo Muha, said the call by CPA Africa is in line with the association’s strategic plan.

He said the CPA Strategic Plan of 2022-2025 has the objective of persuading the UK government to implement legislation that would recognise the CPA as an international inter-parliamentary organisation.

‘The objective further seeks to persuade the UK government to enact legislation that would change the CPA legal status from a UK charity organisation governed by British charity laws to an Int
ernational Parliamentary Organisation. However, this strategic plan is about to end within a year or so, but little is being done from the side of the UK government,’ said Muha, who is also the CPA Africa executive committee vice chairperson.

CPA is an organisation of parliaments and legislatures of countries that were once colonised by Britain. It consists of 52 member states and is divided into nine regions, of which CPA Africa is the biggest.

CPA Africa treasurer and chairperson of the budget committee, Lentheng Ntombi Mekgwe, said the committee is also directly linked to activities related to changing the CPA status into an international parliamentary body.

Mekgwee, who is the speaker of South Africa’s Gauteng Provincial Legislature, said the transformation of the CPA was the main agenda of the Thursday meeting.

She told Nampa on the margins of the meeting that currently the CPA is registered as a charity organisation in terms of the Charity Act of the United Kingdom.

‘So as African branches, we cann
ot always put money in a charity organisation because when it is dissolved, the money will be used in charity organisations in the United Kingdom. Whereas we have our own people on the African continent who are poor and need to change their own status, so we want to change this status. And I am proud because, as a Gauteng province, we champion that rule to be changed,’ she said.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency

OSHAKATI: Oshana Governor, Elia Irimari, has urged people to make use of various government subsidies availed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform to maximise on their harvest outcomes, including the use of tractors.

In an interview with Nampa on Thursday, Irimari stated that the region has 30 operational tractors that can be used by the farmers in its 11 constituencies.

According to Irimari, three of the constituencies have been given three tractors each for use, with the rest of the tractors having been shared among the remaining eight constituencies.

Meanwhile, he indicated that a total of 18 people were trained on how to operate the tractors.

‘I therefore invite our community members to approach the agriculture ministry and find out about the available assistance [subsidies],’ he said.

The Ministry of Agriculture had acquired a total of 350 tractors with different capacities that were distributed across the country to benefit communal farmers during the ploughing season.

Currently,
ploughing by government tractors costs N.dollars 250 per hectare, the required fee to be paid by farmers that make use of the tractors, while private tractors will be subsided by 60 per cent.

Meanwhile animal-drawn ploughing is N.dollars 350 per hectare and is also subsided by government.

Additionally, Irimari encouraged farmers to venture into the establishment of backyard gardens, especially during the rainy season, as this offers good potential for small scale production of vegetables for household consumption and resale.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency

WINDHOEK: The Namibian Society of Composers and Authors of Music (Nascam) has been operating for 26 years without any operational policies.

Speaking at Nascam’s open day here on Thursday, its new Chief Executive Officer, Albert Nicanor expressed discontent over the lack of policies and technical capacity to implement its mandate over the years, resulting in many local artists being unhappy with the institution’s leadership.

Nascam collects royalties fees for its 8 064 member artists as per the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 6 of 1994 aimed at protecting and promoting copyright and ensuring fair numeration.

‘For 26 years the institution has had no document available such as a strategic plan and an annual budget. If you want to spend on something at Nascam it was just like, ‘Let’s spend.’ The current status is very critical in that a lot of things have to be established as if they are new,’ he stressed.

Nicanor, who has been in office for five months, further explained that most of Nascam’
s employees did have signed employment contracts in place and circumstances surrounding those with purported employment contract ‘old contracts’ are not entirely clear, resulting in possibilities that some individuals may have altered their employment contracts and were receiving remunerations that were never approved by the board.

At the same event, Nascam board chairperson Sulaiman Kayababa stressed that more than 10 boards led Nascam in the past, without implementing any policy.

This, he said, has led the current board appointed in April 2022 to decide to have the annual bonuses discontinued and instead introduce a performance management system to help the organization to evaluate employee’s performance objectively and provide them with constructive feedback on how to improve their skills and achieve the company goals.

Legendary musician Ras Sheehama has called for the current leadership to dismantle Nascam’s current operational process to establish new systems and policies geared towards the betterment
of artists.

‘Most of us artists here don’t understand the law of copyright because of our education level, therefore artists trust Nascam to collect their money,’ he stressed.

Nascam collected N.dollars 2 million in royalties fees of which N.dollars 152 000 was paid to 65 sister international societies, noting only 1 200 members received royalties.

A total of 2 000 broadcasters are registered with Nascam.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency